The Youtube Heroes headdesk-session.

Well, Crypticcat, you got what you wanted!; is what I hear you say; the youtubers are getting policed now. The Youtube Heroes will sort them out!

Except, that's not what I wanted at all. I advocated that Youtubers should create a governing-body that aims to establish convenant of conduct that quality-minded youtubers should adhere too. Policing yourself is always better than getting policed. ACAB and all that. Speaking with youtubers over the last year got me nothing but ridicule. 'Freedom of Speech' and 'Fair Use' are the pillars of professional leechdom and apparently a cover all shield that protects even the most lousy of youtuberdom.

So, the untouchables blindly carry on feeling secure in their conviction that they can continue to generate revenue over third-party IPs that the rightful owners have no tools for to defend it from being used. This could lead to only one thing; Youtube overtaking them with quality-control measures of their own. It really was inevitable. Not only the Youtubers themselves are earning money with ad-revenue, the entire platform is build on it and can only exist by the virtue of advertizements. That means that Youtube has to conform to the wishes of said advertizers and that the people who earn a living through Youtube have to conform by proxy.

However, the Youtube Heroes programme is not the way to go about it. There's nothing more destructive in this world than giving control to Joe Blow from Nowhereville, Delaware and then going a step further by giving that same control to the entire State for good measure. You don't give a total nobody control over a nuclear reactor and likewise, you don't give nobodies control over an open social media platform. Already there are actual companies earning money by falsely monetizing videos. Layer on top of that the given that literally anyone with a chip on their shoulder and a thorn in their side can become a Youtube Hero and flag any video according to their standards and convictions... Well, I hope that a lot of youtubers haven't forgotten what a holding down a dayjob feels like.

While on the surface the Youtube Hero programme will sort effect as the contingent of cringe-channels will be forced out of existence and other channels will go down in flames in a power-struggle, good quality channels are not safe in the least. Every youtuber is at risk of losing their business (Though that is not my concern. I have paused on the strenuousness of being a youtuber in the past.) due to faceless unknowns flagging their videos for any reason you care to wave a dead cat at.

Community-moderation is a dead-end road that only works in the start-up, but is unfeasable in the long term. You can see it as a form of instituted terrorism. The Youtube Hero can strike anywhere, everywhere at any time and the youtuber has to fear being robbed of income for whatever transgression was made in the eye of some idiot with a modicrum of virtual power. While I already see youtubers cleaning up their act (Bleeping out swears, taking more care when sharing opinions and generally reason like an adjusted adult.), they do so out of fear and because they're being bullied into it. That's not the right way to excert quality-control as it stiffles creativety and leaves little room for healthy, flourishing content-creation.

With the same brush-stroke though, I brush aside most youtuber's whinging with little egard. Virtually all of them sat there squeezing the golden eggs out of the goose and believed that they could go on indefinately squeezing ever more golden eggs out of the abused avian. Even with everything I described above, many youtubers, famous or not, had it coming. But not at the hand of faceless nobodies. That isn't the way to do it and it never will be.